


backwards through the megaphone

by folkloricfeel, jannika



Series: a tape recording of the sound of the rebel underground [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Deleted Scenes, Extra Material, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mentions of period-typical sex drugs and rock&roll, Mentions of the original trio and beyond, Multi, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 22:18:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6396109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folkloricfeel/pseuds/folkloricfeel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jannika/pseuds/jannika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ongoing collection of deleted/extra scenes from "a resistance jacket torn to shreds, and a dream inside our heads." Will most likely feature deleted/extra scenes from other parts of the "tape recording of the sound of the rebel underground" universe, as those parts are completed as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. blue nines on the telephone, or, 0:13:57 timestamp on the record.

**Author's Note:**

> Everything posted here is part of the extra/interactive material for this fic universe over at [its Tumblr](http://soundoftherebelunderground.tumblr.com/). If you're interested and enjoying the AU, follow us over there (or talk to us on anon)! The posted part of this series on AO3 is only a small part of the larger universe of Resistance Records - feel free to come hang out with us over there as well!
> 
> [Synesthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) is what we meant here with regard to Finn - look it up if you're not familiar, it's a very cool, if very complicated and hard-to-describe, extrasensory phenomenon! (One of the co-authors of this verse can say that from personal experience, in fact...)

It’s a Tuesday in March, and Rey has to leave for work in half an hour and Poe’s statistics textbook is open at his desk, more for show than for any actual studying for tomorrow’s exam, he supposes. Finn is sprawled out across Poe’s bed, feet kicking off the edge, head in Rey’s lap as she stares intently at her phone and mutters about maneuvers in level five of the flight simulator game she’s been trying to beat all week. The record spins its way to “Judy and the Dream of Horses” and Finn says:

“You know, it’s funny how the colors in this song sound different on vinyl than they usually do.”

Poe’s hand stills on his pencil.

“The what?” Rey asks, looking up from her phone.

“The colors,” Finn repeats, “you know.” He waves his hand to articulate, and mostly ends up swatting at Rey’s.

“Colors?” Poe asks, trying to puzzle that one out. Finn says all these things that surprise him, all the time, and a lot of them are. Poe is glad for them--glad that Finn’s getting better and better all the time at letting himself just ramble, instead of filtering and worrying so much about saying the right thing all the time--but usually, Poe can make more sense of even the most random rambles than this one.

“Yeah,” Finn nods, “they’re darker than when I have headphones in, like--the blue’s richer, more like royal blue I guess, and all the orange has got this.” He frowns, scrunching up his face in thought. “Scratchy stuff in it, like when you’re writing on a chalkboard, or. I don’t know.”

“Colors,” Rey repeats, and Finn shrinks away from her lap a little.

“I mean,” he says, “maybe that’s just the vinyl, you know? Vinyl’s scratchy, it’s probably just this copy--”

“You mean, like.” Poe starts, thinking. “Are you talking about colors in the music?”

“Well, yeah,” Finn shrugs, like that should’ve been obvious, or something. Poe exchanges a glance with Rey, who raises her eyebrows at him, like she’s just as lost here as he feels.

“Colors,” Rey repeats again, biting her lip.

“Wait,” Finn says, sitting up, “don’t you–when you guys listen to music, you don’t--”

Rey shakes her head, slowly. “I mean, every now and then? You associate colors with things, but that’s usually the album cover or whatever, I guess.” She sets her phone down on the bed beside her, and moves to sit up more, too. “But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“Oh, god,” Finn says, “I, shit, and now you think I’m crazy, I didn’t mean to–”

“It’s not crazy,” Poe cuts him off, rolling his desk chair over to the edge of the bed, thinking, recalling. He’s seen quotes, things his favorite artists have said, from time to time, about music sounding like color, a specific song recalling a certain palette, and. He’s always assumed that was a metaphor thing, that that was just the way artists talked about their work, that discussing one art form using the language of another was the sort of pretentious talk you pulled out when being interviewed by Pitchfork or Rolling Stone for the twentieth time and you’d run out of new soundbytes. He’s not certain about that at all now.

“Not at all,” Rey reiterates, taking Finn’s hand, “you should tell us more about it?”

“I--okay,” Finn starts, looking nervous. “I guess I’ve--never really thought about it before now, you know? It’s just, well. I thought everyone, I always assumed.”

(Poe wonders, sometimes, just how much Finn doesn’t say, even through all those words he has, how much he’s always _assumed_ about other stuff too because he’s never had anyone to ask before about how much things were different for them.)

“Go on,” Rey says, and Poe nods in encouragement, too.

“Okay, so, like,” Finn says, then frowns again. “Wait. You guys really don’t see colors when you listen to music?”

“No,” Poe says, “you do, though?” Finn swallows, and Poe adds, “that sounds really fucking cool, I’m jealous,” when Finn looks like he might shut down again.

“Yeah,” Finn says, “I mean, I guess it is. I just thought everybody was like that, I mean. Especially you guys, with how much you love music and stuff--I’ve never really thought about it.”

“That is really fucking cool, Poe’s right,” Rey says, thoughtful. “So like, you just--you see colors in your head when you listen to a song, or what?”

“Sort of,” Finn says, shaking his head, “it’s like--it’s hard to explain. It’s kind of like how. How you see things in a dream, even though you aren’t really seeing them, you still kind of are, I guess?”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Poe says. “Huh.”

“There was a kid in one of my foster homes, back in Arizona,” Rey says, still squeezing Finn’s hand, “and I always thought--he was little, he was five or six, and he didn’t have a lot of friends, you know? So I always assumed that he just had a really active imagination, he was kind of excitable like that all the time, so I just assumed when he said, like.” She trails off, and Poe scoots his chair even closer.

“Assumed?” Poe asks.

“He would talk about, like--numbers, and things? Ask me why the nine on the living room phone was blue when the one on his phone keyboard was yellow, talk about numbers like they were his friends, like they had personalities, and I just.” Rey shrugs. “I didn’t really make friends with the other kids or anything, I don’t--I always just assumed he was lonely, imaginary friend stuff and all.”

“Maybe he wasn’t,” Poe says, still thinking. Finn lights up a little, at that. “I mean, he probably was lonely too, but.”

“I’ve always remembered that, though,” Rey says, “it’s been years since I moved out of there and I still think about blue nines on telephones sometimes.”

“Yeah?” Finn asks, “that’s really cool. Huh.”

“Yeah,” Rey says, not letting go of his hand. “Now, come on, flip the record and tell us more about your color stuff.”

Finn does, and he spends the remainder of the half-hour telling them all about shades of red in “Me and the Major” and the twinkling lights that start up halfway through the guitar refrain of “Fox in the Snow,” and the next time they’re hanging out, Finn hands Poe his phone, a tab open to things on Wikipedia he’s found about people like him. People who see colors in music, and ones who find textures in sounds, and boys who talk to blue nines on the telephone. He scrunches his face up as Poe passes the phone to a grinning Rey, and Poe smiles too, because even though they’ve been friends for almost the whole school year now, Finn surprises him all the time, even still.


	2. bb release series: no.8, second vinyl pressing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Tumblr asks wanting to know more about Poe and BB-8's relationship here in this verse, as well as his father-son relationship with Kes.
> 
> (If we ever fuck up anything to do with the Damerons' heritage, please let us know! Neither of us speak Spanish fluently, but not whitewashing the Damerons is _extremely_ important to us. Feel free to talk back to us on [Tumblr](http://soundoftherebelunderground.tumblr.com/) if you need to!)

The first time that poor little dog has to be taken to the vet, Kes Dameron resigns himself to the fact that the backseat cushions of his station wagon will probably never be the same.

Listen--Kes tries very hard, in everything he does in life, to be a patient man, especially when it comes to raising a teenager all on his own. A few decades on the beat do that to a guy, really. Carrying a gun into work every day instead of a briefcase, a weapon you know might accidentally kill someone when you’re just trying to do your job and keep people safe, makes you develop some patience trial-by-fire, helps you put things into perspective of what’s important and not when you make it home safe at the end of the day.

And, like--his son’s a good kid.

He knows he’s lucky in that regard. He’s heard all kinds of parenting horror stories over the years, knows Pete who works weekend dispatch already has his hands full with a son who’s been suspended twice for fights on school grounds and a boy-crazy daughter, and neither of them is as old as Poe yet, even. His son’s a good kid, a solid head on his shoulders, even if it’s lost in the clouds half the time these days between headphones, listening to some band Kes has never heard of that quit making music before Poe was born. Poe’s never been a discipline problem, except for that one time talking back to a social studies teacher in sixth grade, which, well--that was bullshit in his own estimation, too. He and Shara Bey had had some choice words with the vice principal after that incident, so it’s not like he was going to ground his son for sticking up for his own heritage. He would have stood for no less from him, being honest about things.

(Sometimes he thinks he should’ve gotten Poe out of this backwards-ass town, after. Well. It’s not like he doesn’t have enough seniority for a transfer, hasn’t had better offers, jobs that would’ve taken him off the beat in a heartbeat, especially given everything--

He just didn’t see the value in uprooting the kid, changing schools and all that, when Poe’s got his head up in sound clouds too much for roots as it is.

Given everything, you know. It was probably for the best.)

He knows he’s lucky to have a son like Poe, and he knows it’s best to let his kid learn his own lessons sometimes, too. So when the dog thing had come up, he’d thought, _good opportunity for you to learn some responsibility, then_. Puppy-pad training and all that, well--it’d do Poe some good to be dragged out in the open air twice a day by some little barking buddy.

It’s just. He’d tried to suggest that nice cocker spaniel in the corner cage, when they’d gotten to the shelter. The one that looked like it didn’t do much but curl up on your lap and nap most of the time.

Knowing his son?

Shouldn’t surprise him that Poe had taken one look at that Corgi and fallen in deep dog-human love forever, instead.

Sometimes, for all the other reasons he wishes every day, _dios mediante_ , that Shara Bey were still here with him--maybe she could’ve wrangled that dog into shape a little, kept it from taking over everyone’s lives in quite the way that it has. It’s not a bad dog at all, doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in its twelve-pound body--Kes feels sorry for the little fellow, really, he didn’t think a dog could have anxiety, but you learn something new every day, don’t you?

Well, apparently, a dog can be just about anything a person can, because Kes is pretty certain the little thing is throwing a temper tantrum in his backseat right now like he hasn’t seen since Poe was four years old.

In the fifteen-minute drive to the vet’s office, from what Kes can tell in the rear-view mirror, the dog has been alternating between burying its nose in Poe’s lap and whimpering and throwing itself dramatically onto the seat cushion next to him, pawing frantically at the fabric or just flopping with a few well-placed high-pitched squeals to punctuate. His son keeps shooting him these helpless looks as he tries to calm it down, and Kes keeps chuckling to himself, because _you picked this one yourself, remember that cocker spaniel?_

Poe’s been handling himself well, though, for a fifteen-year-old making his first trip to the vet, caring for the well-being of another little thing for the first time since that hermit crab disaster in the second grade. (Kes doesn’t know why these schools hand out pets to children like they’re vending-machine prizes. That damn thing had bitten both Poe and Shara Bey the first week they’d had it, and Poe had begged him to get rid of it--hell, his wife wasn’t keen on the idea of feeding it again, either--but Kes wasn’t about to set some animal off in the wild only for it to end up being lunch for the neighbor’s German Shepherd.) He closed the window real quick when the dog started getting ideas about jumping out into traffic, and has taken to running soothing circles in its fur between its ears, humming a song that makes Kes think of his wife, wish she could be here to see this, too.

(He knows he’s making her proud, wherever she is now, raising Poe for the both of them. He hopes, anyway.

No--he knows it. Sometimes he still feels her there with them, in little ways, like how she always used to hum to herself while washing the dishes, always used to have something on the downstairs stereo and pull him up to dance to it on quiet nights after lights-out rule, just like they used to go out and do so much before Poe was born.

Listen, Kes doesn’t know what he thinks about this world half the time anymore, how any God could let so much injustice happen in the things he sees at work every day, but he knows it’s probably not coincidence his son grew up to love music as much as his mother.

He tells himself all the time until he knows it, that he’s raising Poe right for the both of them now.)

“Hey, buddy,” he hears Poe say softly, and glances back at a red light to find his son nuzzling his nose into the fuzz on top of the little dog’s head, holding it tight. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise. The vet’s not that scary, okay?”

The little thing’s still shaking in Poe’s arms by the time they pull into the parking lot at the vet’s office, but the high-pitched squealing has stopped, at least. Kes laughs to himself as he shuts off the ignition, imagining the look on their longtime family vet’s face as his son tries to explain that the little fellow’s name is not, in fact, some sci-fi reference, but all about something to do with vinyl record codes Kes isn’t certain he’s fully got the gist of either, even now.

Poe keeps whispering in BB-8’s ear the whole time they sit in the lobby, telling the dog, “all they’ve gotta do is give you something to make your stomach feel better. I got you. You’re okay.”

Kes thinks that, wherever his wife is, she’s got to be smiling down on them right now.

He thinks she probably would’ve known more about vinyl record codes than him, but he’s got to suck it up and learn for the both of them, just to be sure.


End file.
